What's Next For LED Technology?

Lighting and displays have made tremendous advances over the past few decades. The road from filament to LED has been filled with a lot of successful, and unsuccessful, experiments. We’ve had everything from breakthroughs like LED panels to TVs that explode for seemingly no reason.

While LED isn’t likely to explode due to its low volatility and lack of need for power, researchers are continuing to look for ways to improve it. Panels can be attached and connected in a very customizable way, but lack actual flexibility to fold. In addition, the output, efficiency, brightness, color purity, contrast and resolution all still have room for improvement.

In November 2018, researchers released a paper showcasing a new technology. To simplify, we’ll call them OLEDs. That stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. OLEDs have been around for decades with the first OLED device being developed back in 1987. However, they’re seeing continued use as companies and researchers discover ways to improve TVs, watches, displays, phones and other technology.

For instance, Dell unveiled an OLED monitor in 2016 and Apple used OLED panels in its watches as early as 2015. As for Dell, that monitor made two trips to the market and did not see a lot of success at a price of $4,999 (which they later dropped to $3,500 with the same amount of success). The main issue, according to customers, was that color was not visible enough at off-angles. Apple’s seen a little more success with their newest phone and watches, though they require significantly less output than a monitor or TV.

So why isn’t everyone using OLED panels?

As with any “new” technology (or recently improved technology), the development costs need to drop a little for it to be more marketable. LEDs provide high quality displays and cost significantly less, so there’s not a lot of motivation for users to switch over to the new technology just yet.

Price isn’t the only issue however. Companies that produce luxury items such as BMW are planning to use OLED technology in their brake lights and various other places on the car, but are hesitant to pull the trigger due to the lack of brightness at angles. In fact, brightness is the main complaint of OLEDs currently.

How is OLED different from LED?

Both work in a similar fashion. Without getting into overly-scientific terms, you simply feed electricity to both of them and they use the inner material to produce light. LEDs use a semi-conductor material that’s manufactured while OLEDs, as the name suggests, use an organic compound (containing Carbon).

In both cases, you simply feed the conductor electricity and it lights up, but the way it lights up is different. With LEDs, there is control over the lighting itself but it is less flexible while OLEDs contain flexible, thin organic material that is less controllable.

In the future, that organic material might allow us to make panels that are foldable, squeezable and extremely versatile. In the meantime, the technology isn’t quite there yet. As the price continues to drop and they figure out solutions to the brightness issue, you’ll be seeing a lot more of this technology pop up in the future.